DOCSLIB.ORG

The Later Works of Titian

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

The Later works of Titian Claude Phillips The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Later works of Titian, by Claude Phillips This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: The Later works of Titian Author: Claude Phillips Release Date: June 19, 2004 [eBook #12657] Language: English Character set encoding: US-ASCII ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LATER WORKS OF TITIAN*** E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Malliere, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 12657-h.htm or 12657-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/1/2/6/5/12657/12657-h/12657-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/1/2/6/5/12657/12657-h.zip) THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN By CLAUDE PHILLIPS Keeper of the Wallace Collection 1898 [Illustration: Titian. From a photograph by G. Brogi.] [Illustration] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS COPPER PLATES Portrait of Titian, by himself. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Frontispiece La Bella di Tiziano. Pitti Palace, Florence. Titian's daughter Lavinia. Berlin Gallery. The Cornaro Family. Collection of the Duke of Northumberland. ILLUSTRATIONS PRINTED IN SEPIA Drawing of St. Jerome. British Museum. Landscape with Stag. Collection of Professor Legros. ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and St. John the Baptist. In the National Gallery. Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici. Pitti Palace, Florence. Francis the First. Louvre. Portrait of a Nobleman. Pitti Palace, Florence. S. Giovanni Elemosinario giving Alms. In the Church of that name at Venice. The Girl in the Fur Cloak. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. The Battle of Cadore (from a reduced copy of part only). Uffizi Gallery, Florence. The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice. The Magdalen. Pitti Palace, Florence. The Infant Daughter of Roberto Strozzi. Royal Gallery, Berlin. Ecce Homo. Imperial Gallery, Vienna Aretino. Pitti Palace, Florence Pope Paul III. with Cardinal Farnese and Ottavio Farnese. Naples Gallery Danae and the Golden Rain. Naples Gallery Charles V. at the Battle of Muehlberg. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid Venus with the Mirror. Gallery of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg Christ crowned with Thorns. Louvre The Rape of Europa Portrait of Titian, by himself. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid St. Jerome in the Desert. Gallery of the Brera, Milan The Education of Cupid. Gallery of the Villa Borghese, Rome Religion succoured by Spain. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid Portrait of the Antiquary Jacopo da Strada. Imperial Gallery, Vienna Madonna and Child. Collection of Mr. Ludwig Mond Christ crowned with Thorns. Alte Pinakothek, Munich Pieta. By Titian and Palma Giovine. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN CHAPTER I _Friendship with Aretino--Its effect on Titian's art--Characteristics of the middle period--"Madonna with St. Catherine" of National Gallery--Portraits not painted from life--"Magdalen" of the Pitti--First Portrait of Charles V.--Titian the painter, par excellence, of aristocratic traits--The "d'Avalos Allegory"--Portrait of Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici--S. Giovanni Elemosinario altar-piece._ Having followed Titian as far as the year 1530, rendered memorable by that sensational, and, of its kind, triumphant achievement, _The Martyrdom of St. Peter the Dominican_, we must retrace our steps some three years in order to dwell a little upon an incident which must appear of vital importance to those who seek to understand Titian's life, and, above all, to follow the development of his art during the middle period of splendid maturity reaching to the confines of old age. This incident is the meeting with Pietro Aretino at Venice in 1527, and the gradual strengthening by mutual service and mutual inclination of the bonds of a friendship which is to endure without break until the life of the Aretine comes, many years later, to a sudden and violent end. Titian was at that time fifty years of age, and he might thus be deemed to have over-passed the age of sensuous delights. Yet it must be remembered that he was in the fullest vigour of manhood, and had only then arrived at the middle point of a career which, in its untroubled serenity, was to endure for a full half-century more, less a single year. Three years later on, that is to say in the middle of August 1530, the death of his wife Cecilia, who had borne to him Pomponio, Orazio, and Lavinia, left him all disconsolate, and so embarrassed with the cares of his young family that he was compelled to appeal to his sister Orsa, who thereupon came from Cadore to preside over his household. The highest point of celebrity, of favour with princes and magnates, having been attained, and a certain royalty in Venetian art being already conceded to him, there was no longer any obstacle to the organising of a life in which all the refinements of culture and all the delights of sense were to form the most agreeable relief to days of continuous and magnificently fruitful labour. It is just because Titian's art of this great period of some twenty years so entirely accords with what we know, and may legitimately infer, to have been his life at this time, that it becomes important to consider the friendship with Aretino and the rise of the so-called Triumvirate, which was a kind of Council of Three, having as its _raison d'etre_ the mutual furtherance of material interests, and the pursuit of art, love, and pleasure. The third member of the Triumvirate was Jacopo Tatti or del Sansovino, the Florentine sculptor, whose fame and fortune were so far above his deserts as an artist. Coming to Venice after the sack of Rome, which so entirely for the moment disorganised art and artists in the pontifical city, he elected to remain there notwithstanding the pressing invitations sent to him by Francis the First to take service with him. In 1529 he was appointed architect of San Marco, and he then by his adhesion completed the Triumvirate which was to endure for more than a quarter of a century. It has always excited a certain sense of distrust in Titian, and caused the world to form a lower estimate of his character than it would otherwise have done, that he should have been capable of thus living in the closest and most fraternal intimacy with a man so spotted and in many ways so infamous as Aretino. Without precisely calling Titian to account in set terms, his biographers Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and above all M. Georges Lafenestre in _La Vie et L'Oeuvre du Titien_, have relentlessly raked up Aretino's past before he came together with the Cadorine, and as pitilessly laid bare that organised system of professional sycophancy, adulation, scurrilous libel, and blackmail, which was the foundation and the backbone of his life of outward pomp and luxurious ease at Venice. By them, as by his other biographers, he has been judged, not indeed unjustly, yet perhaps too much from the standard of our own time, too little from that of his own. With all his infamies, Aretino was a man whom sovereigns and princes, nay even pontiffs, delighted to honour, or rather to distinguish by honours. The Marquess Federigo Gonzaga of Mantua, the Duke Guidobaldo II. of Urbino, among many others, showed themselves ready to propitiate him; and such a man as Titian the worldly-wise, the lover of splendid living to whom ample means and the fruitful favour of the great were a necessity; who was grasping yet not avaricious, who loved wealth chiefly because it secured material consideration and a life of serene enjoyment; such a man could not be expected to rise superior to the temptations presented by a friendship with Aretino, or to despise the immense advantages which it included. As he is revealed by his biographers, and above all by himself, Aretino was essentially "good company." He could pass off his most flagrant misdeeds, his worst sallies, with a certain large and Rabelaisian gaiety; if he made money his chief god, it was to spend it in magnificent clothes and high living, but also at times with an intelligent and even a beneficent liberality. He was a fine though not an unerring connoisseur of art, he had a passionate love of music, and an unusually exquisite perception of the beauties of Nature. To hint that the lower nature of the man corrupted that of Titian, and exercised a disintegrating influence over his art, would be to go far beyond the requirements of the case. The great Venetian, though he might at this stage be much nearer to earth than in those early days when he was enveloped in the golden glow of Giorgione's overmastering influence, could never have lowered himself to the level of those too famous _Sonetti Lussuriosi_ which brought down the vengeance of even a Medici Pope (Clement VII.) upon Aretino the writer, Giulio Romano the illustrator, and Marcantonio Raimondi the engraver. Gracious and dignified in sensuousness he always remained even when, as at this middle stage of his career, the vivifying shafts of poetry no longer pierced through, and transmuted with their vibration of true passion, the fair realities of life. He could never have been guilty of the frigid and calculated indecency of a Giulio Romano; he could not have cast aside all conventional restraints, of taste as well as of propriety, as Rubens and even Rembrandt did on occasion; but as Van Dyck, the child of Titian almost as much as he was the child of Rubens, ever shrank from doing.
Recommended publications
  • 1 '“Individualism” – a Word Unknown to Our Ancestors'

    1 '“Individualism” – a Word Unknown to Our Ancestors'

    Notes 1 ‘“Individualism” – a Word Unknown to our Ancestors’ 1 Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent: Original Text with English Translation, ed. H. J. Schroeder (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1941), pp. 214–17 and pp. 483–5. 2 Veronese’s trial is published in Philipp Fehl, ‘Veronese and the Inquisition: A Study of the Subject Matter of the So-Called Feast in the House of Levi’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, ser. VI, 58 (1961): 348–54; English translation in Venice: A Documentary History, ed. David Chambers and Brian Pullan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), pp. 232–6. 3 David Rosand, Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, rev. edn 1997), p. 120 is correct to ask that we now call this work The Last Supper – a request that, thus far, has gone unheeded. 4 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore, 2 vols (New York: Harper & Row, 1958); for the original German, I have used Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, ed. Horst Günther (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1989). 5 Jacob Burckhardt, Der Cicerone: eine Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens (Leipzig: Alfren Kröner, 1927), pp. 932–5. 6 Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance, vol. 1, p. 143 for both citations. 7 Among the more influential works inviting a rethinking of the history of the self – from antiquity to the twentieth century – see Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989). 8 Douglas Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries: Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p.
  • Mattia & Marianovella Romano

    Mattia & Marianovella Romano

    Mattia & MariaNovella Romano A Selection of Master Drawings A Selection of Master Drawings Mattia & Maria Novella Romano A Selection of Drawings are sold mounted but not framed. Master Drawings © Copyright Mattia & Maria Novelaa Romano, 2015 Designed by Mattia & Maria Novella Romano and Saverio Fontini 2015 Mattia & Maria Novella Romano 36, Borgo Ognissanti 50123 Florence – Italy Telephone +39 055 239 60 06 Email: [email protected] www.antiksimoneromanoefigli.com Mattia & Maria Novella Romano A Selection of Master Drawings 2015 F R FRATELLI ROMANO 36, Borgo Ognissanti Florence - Italy Acknowledgements Index of Artists We would like to thank Luisa Berretti, Carlo Falciani, Catherine Gouguel, Martin Hirschoeck, Ellida Minelli, Cristiana Romalli, Annalisa Scarpa and Julien Stock for their help in the preparation of this catalogue. Index of Artists 15 1 3 BARGHEER EDUARD BERTANI GIOVAN BAttISTA BRIZIO FRANCESCO (?) 5 9 7 8 CANTARINI SIMONE CONCA SEBASTIANO DE FERRARI GREGORIO DE MAttEIS PAOLO 12 10 14 6 FISCHEttI FEDELE FONTEBASSO FRANCESCO GEMITO VINCENZO GIORDANO LUCA 2 11 13 4 MARCHEttI MARCO MENESCARDI GIUSTINO SABATELLI LUIGI TASSI AGOSTINO 1. GIOVAN BAttISTA BERTANI Mantua c. 1516 – 1576 Bacchus and Erigone Pen, ink and watercoloured ink on watermarked laid paper squared in chalk 208 x 163 mm. (8 ¼ x 6 ⅜ in.) PROVENANCE Private collection. Giovan Battista Bertani was the successor to Giulio At the centre of the composition a man with long hair Romano in the prestigious work site of the Ducal Palace seems to be holding a woman close to him. She is seen in Mantua.1 His name is first mentioned in documents of from behind, with vines clinging to her; to the sides of 1531 as ‘pictor’, under the direction of the master, during the central group, there are two pairs of little erotes who the construction works of the “Palazzina della Paleologa”, play among themselves, passing bunches of grapes to each which no longer exists, in the Ducal Palace.2 According other.
  • Tiziano 001-098

    Tiziano 001-098

    53 La “bottega” di Tiziano: sistema solare e buco nero Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo Bottega? non sempre risolve le cose, che risultano spes- Partiamo da un caso alla ribalta proprio nei so assai più complesse di quanto una storia giorni di questo convegno1. dell’arte di impostazione sostanzialmente po- Il 6 aprile 2006 alla Christie’s di New York è sitivistica (che insegue prove, accumulando stata battuta la cosiddetta Madonna Molloy, dati e indizi che immette in una ricostruzione una Mater dolorosa che ha avuto una vicenda “logica” del problema) tenda a riconoscere, ed critica piuttosto in ombra nella letteratura ti- esistono casi specifici o fenomeni generali in zianesca (fig. 25)2. Ascritta al maestro, tra gli cui la griglia di inquadramento valutativo, per altri, da von Hadeln, Mayer e Suida, è caduta tenere, dovrà divenire necessariamente molto nel limbo a seguito delle espunzioni di Valca- flessibile, se addirittura non dovrà essere ri- nover, Wethey e Pallucchini, nei tre repertori messa in discussione in toto, ammettendo l’e- ragionati tizianeschi che dal 1969 continuano sistenza di coni d’ombra che oscurano il mi- a costituire la base di orientamento per gli stero sia della creazione individuale, sia della specialisti3. In seguito il catalogo di vendita produzione di “scuola”. Insomma, per esser registra solo il parere sospensivo (“Tiziano?”) chiari, bisognerà pur ammettere che il genio di Alessandro Ballarin, che però non conosce- non è sempre immenso e che il minore – va personalmente il pezzo4. oscuri collaboratori compresi –
  • Information to Users

    Information to Users

    INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy subm itted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6’ x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOTE TO USERS Copyrighted materials in this document have not been filmed at the request of the author. They are available for consultation at the author’s university library.
  • Seventeenth-Century News

    Seventeenth-Century News

    167 seventeenth-century news It was certainly no simple coincidence that an equally compre- hensive modernist, the painter Diego de Velázquez, stepped in the decoration of the Torre cycle to complement Rubens’s mythological inventions with his allegorical portraits. Georgievska-Shine and Silver underscore Velázquez’s mock-heroic rhetoric as the corresponding narrative force to Rubens’s mythological inventions (195). In kin- ship with his Flemish counterpart, Velázquez relayed the meeting of oppositions as a mode for portraying, for instance, the ambivalent character of Mars in his dual stance as the god of war and the lover of Venus. Yet the portraits of courtiers, jesters, and dwarfs illustrate Velázquez’s ability to convey a sense of separateness from the world, an intentional withdrawal or a natural alienation that enhances the coloristic effects of oppositions among the populace at the royal court (214, 215). Persuaded much like Rubens by the demystification of the gods as the dominant theme at the Torre de la Parada, Velázquez presents Philip IV’s portrait as a hunter whose ordinary appearance departs from an ideal image of the ruler while stressing the pronounced Habsburg physiognomy and aplomb (217). The book stands out in Spanish art historical literature and simul- taneously paves the way for further insights into the culture of early modernity. It recommends that original thought return to art history, with a vehemence only comparable to Eugenio d’Ors’s Three Hours in the Prado Museum (1923), which believed in breaking traditional norms to advance visual interpretation. D’Ors argued that classical antiquity ceased to hold sway over modern art and that artists referred back to it in allegorical, not literal modes.
  • LOCATING El GRECO in LATE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY

    LOCATING El GRECO in LATE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY

    View metadata, citation and similarbroughtCORE papers to you at by core.ac.uk provided by Online Repository of Birkbeck Institutional Theses LOCATING El GRECO IN LATE SIXTEENTH‐CENTURY ROME: ART and LEARNING, RIVALRY and PATRONAGE Ioanna Goniotaki Department of History of Art, School of Arts Birkbeck College, University of London Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, July 2017 -1- Signed declaration I declare that the work presented in the thesis is my own Ioanna Goniotaki -2- ABSTRACT Much has been written about the artistic output of Domenicos Theotocopoulos during his time in Spain, but few scholars have examined his works in Venice and even fewer have looked at the years he spent in Rome. This may be in part attributed to the lack of firm documentary evidence regarding his activities there and to the small corpus of works that survive from his Italian period, many of which are furthermore controversial. The present study focuses on Domenicos’ Roman years and questions the traditional notion that he was a spiritual painter who served the principles of the Counter Reformation. To support such a view I have looked critically at the Counter Reformation, which I consider more as an amalgam of diverse and competitive institutions and less as an austere movement that strangled the freedom of artistic expression. I contend, moreover, that Domenicos’ acquaintance with Cardinal Alessandro Farnese’s librarian, Fulvio Orsini, was seminal for the artist, not only because it brought him into closer contact with Rome’s most refined circles, but principally because it helped Domenicos to assume the persona of ‘pictor doctus’, the learned artist, following the example of another of Fulvio’s friends, Pirro Ligorio.
  • Titian's Later Mythologies Author(S): W

    Titian's Later Mythologies Author(S): W

    Titian's Later Mythologies Author(s): W. R. Rearick Source: Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 17, No. 33 (1996), pp. 23-67 Published by: IRSA s.c. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1483551 . Accessed: 18/09/2011 17:13 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. IRSA s.c. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Artibus et Historiae. http://www.jstor.org W.R. REARICK Titian'sLater Mythologies I Worship of Venus (Madrid,Museo del Prado) in 1518-1519 when the great Assunta (Venice, Frari)was complete and in place. This Seen together, Titian's two major cycles of paintingsof mytho- was followed directlyby the Andrians (Madrid,Museo del Prado), logical subjects stand apart as one of the most significantand sem- and, after an interval, by the Bacchus and Ariadne (London, inal creations of the ItalianRenaissance. And yet, neither his earli- National Gallery) of 1522-1523.4 The sumptuous sensuality and er cycle nor the later series is without lingering problems that dynamic pictorial energy of these pictures dominated Bellini's continue to cloud their image as projected
  • Architectural Temperance: Spain and Rome, 1700-1759

    Architectural Temperance: Spain and Rome, 1700-1759

    Architectural Temperance Spain and Rome, 1700–1759 Architectural Temperance examines relations between Bourbon Spain and papal Rome (1700–1759) through the lens of cultural politics. With a focus on key Spanish architects sent to study in Rome by the Bourbon Kings, the book also discusses the establishment of a program of architectural educa- tion at the newly-founded Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. Victor Deupi explores why a powerful nation like Spain would temper its own building traditions with the more cosmopolitan trends associated with Rome; often at the expense of its own national and regional traditions. Through the inclusion of previously unpublished documents and images that shed light on the theoretical debates which shaped eighteenth-century architecture in Rome and Madrid, Architectural Temperance provides an insight into readers with new insights into the cultural history of early modern Spain. Victor Deupi teaches the history of art and architecture at the School of Architecture and Design at the New York Institute of Technology and in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Fairfield University. His research focuses on cultural politics in the early modern Ibero-American world. Routledge Research in Architecture The Routledge Research in Architecture series provides the reader with the latest scholarship in the field of architecture. The series publishes research from across the globe and covers areas as diverse as architectural history and theory, technology, digital architecture, structures, materials, details, design, monographs of architects, interior design and much more. By mak- ing these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to promote quality architectural research.
  • Collaborative Painting Between Minds and Hands: Art Criticism, Connoisseurship, and Artistic Sodality in Early Modern Italy

    Collaborative Painting Between Minds and Hands: Art Criticism, Connoisseurship, and Artistic Sodality in Early Modern Italy

    Collaborative Painting Between Minds and Hands: Art Criticism, Connoisseurship, and Artistic Sodality in Early Modern Italy by Colin Alexander Murray A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Art University of Toronto © Copyright by Colin Murray 2016 Collaborative Painting Between Minds and Hands: Art Criticism, Connoisseurship, and Artistic Sodality in Early Modern Italy Colin Alexander Murray Doctor of Philosophy Department of Art University of Toronto 2016 Abstract The intention of this dissertation is to open up collaborative pictures to meaningful analysis by accessing the perspectives of early modern viewers. The Italian primary sources from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries yield a surprising amount of material indicating both common and changing habits of thought when viewers looked at multiple authorial hands working on an artistic project. It will be argued in the course of this dissertation that critics of the seventeenth century were particularly attentive to the practical conditions of collaboration as the embodiment of theory. At the heart of this broad discourse was a trope extolling painters for working with what appeared to be one hand, a figurative and adaptable expression combining the notion of the united corpo and the manifold meanings of the artist’s mano. Hardly insistent on uniformity or anonymity, writers generally believed that collaboration actualized the ideals of a range of social, cultural, theoretical, and cosmological models in which variously formed types of unity were thought to be fostered by the mutual support of the artists’ minds or souls. Further theories arose in response to Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s hypothesis in 1590 that the greatest painting would combine the most highly regarded old masters, each contributing their particular talents towards the whole.
  • Titian, ,A Singular Friend'

    Titian, ,A Singular Friend'

    Originalveröffentlichung in: Kunst und Humanismus. Festschrift für Gosbert Schüßler zum 60. Geburtstag, herausgegeben von Wolfgang Augustyn und Eckhard Leuschner, Dietmar Klinger Verlag, Passau 2007, S. 261-301 CHARLES DAVIS Titian, ,A singular friend‘ A beautiful, if somewhat mysterious portrait painted by Tiziano Vecellio has found its ,last‘ home in the new world, in far away San Francisco, in a place, that is, which de- rives its name from a Spanish novel describing a paradisiacal island called California (figs. 1, 2, 3). Titian’s authorship of the portrait, now belonging to the San Francisco Art Museums and presently housed at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, is testified to by the painter’s signature, and it has never been questioned since the portrait first re- ceived public notice, belatedly, in 1844, when it appeared in the collection of the Mar- quis of Lansdowne. Less spectacular than some of Titian’s best known portraits, the portrait now in California nonetheless belongs to his finest portrayals of the men of his time. Several identifications have been proposed for the sitter, but none advanced with particular conviction. Although the nameless portrait testifies eloquently to the exi- stence of a noble man at rest, whose existence it indeed preserves and continues, his worldly identity remains an unresolved point of interest.1 The San Francisco Art Museums’ ,Portrait of a Gentleman‘ bear’s Titian’s signa- · ture in the inscription which the sitter holds. It reads unequivocally: D Titiano Vecel- lio / Singolare Amico. In all publications the inscription has been read: Di Tiziano sin- golare amico.
  • López De Aragón Arte Antiguo

    López De Aragón Arte Antiguo

    LÓPEZ DE ARAGÓN ARTE ANTIGUO GIROLAMO DENTE ALSO KNOWN AS GIROLAMO DI TIZIANO (C. 1510 - BEFORE 1572) THE FOUR SEASONS OIL ON CANVAS / 162 X 187 CM INSCRIPTION: HIEMO. D. TITIAN/N° 21 PROVENANCE: PARIS, CIRCA 1934; BUENOS AIRES, CIRCA 1990 The discovery of the Four Seasons by Girolamo Dente, almost a century after it was first recognised in a private collection in Paris, allows for reflection on one of the most faithful assistants of Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), who was born in Pieve di Cadore, around 1483/1485, and died in Venice in 1576. The inscription leaves no doubt about the identity of the author however it raises the question over its early provenance, that remains unresolved. All scholars agree on the attribution, but virtually no-one after Baron von Hadeln has been able to study the painting from live (1). The canvas has a thick herringbone texture, according to the Venetian tradition. The colours are fresh and reflect Titian’s palette. The painting is in very good condition. It is a fundamental starting point to research other paintings by “Girolamo di Tiziano”, who, like in this case, worked alone quite early, probably even outside his master’s atelier. Girolamo Dente was originally from the episcopal county of Cèneda, which is now a neighbourhood of Vittorio Veneto (2). The dioceses of Cèneda - also called Saint Titian, bishop of Oderzo, and till today subordinate to the Patriarchate of Aquileia- offered work to Venetian artists, especially to minor ones (3). Together with Belluno and Cadore, it was one of the Venetian territories most actively involved in a “simplified Tizianismo”(4).
  • 030-Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

    030-Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

    (030/21) Santa Cecilia in Trastevere Santa Cecilia in Trastevere is a 9th century monastic and titular church and minor basilica dedicated to St Cecilia, 2nd or 3rd century Roman martyr and patron of musicians. 1 h History: The church is located in what was the most densely inhabited part of Trastevere in early Roman times; its large population mainly due to its proximity to the river Tiber. Where there are now convent buildings there were once four Roman streets surrounding a domus, above which the church was built. It is in the domus that the titulus of a Christian woman named Cecilia was housed. The river would have provided the domus with water for its bathhouse and tannery. j The account of Cecilia stated that she had persuaded her husband Valerian to be baptized. He was subsequently put to death, along with his brother, Tiburtius, and a man named Maximus. Cecilia was then taken before the prefect and sentenced to death by way of suffocation in the caldorinm of her own bathhouse. When this treatment failed to kill her, a soldier was sent to behead her but he struck three blows without succeeding, and she died of the wounds three days later. The remains of the executed men are known to have been buried in the Catacomb of St Praetextatus but the truth of the account and their connection with it is uncertain. 6 h j A sanctuary was built on the house of her husband, Valerianus. This became the ancient Titulus Ceciliae, one of the original twenty-five parishes of Rome.